June 4 (Reuters) \u2013 Serena Williams will partner Canada\u2019s Victoria Mboko in her long-awaited return to professional tennis in the \u200bwomen\u2019s doubles at next week\u2019s \u200cQueen\u2019s Club Championships, Mboko confirmed on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The 44-year-old Williams, a 23-times Grand Slam winner, has not competed since the 2022 U.S. Open. The American \u200cand \u200bMboko, 19, received a \u2060wildcard for the doubles \u2060draw at Queen\u2019s Club.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Queen is back. An honor to share the court with one of the greatest athletes of \u200ball time this week,\u201d Mboko, who had hinted about Williams\u2019 return after \u2060winning her French Open \u2060second-round match, said in a post \u200bon Instagram.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven more excited to play doubles \u200btogether! Tennis is pretty special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams announced her \u200creturn on social media after speculation intensified following her re-entry into the anti-doping testing pool last year, despite previously saying \u2060she was \u201cevolving away from tennis\u201d.<\/p>\n
Williams will take the court in London at the WTA 500 tournament \u2060running from \u200cJune 8 to 14.<\/p>\n
She has \u2060won 14 Grand Slam doubles \u200btitles \u200calongside her sister Venus and the \u200bpair remain \u2060undefeated in major finals.<\/p>\n
Mboko, who is ranked ninth in singles, also claimed Williams as her \u201cidol\u201d at Roland Garros last week.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Paras J. Haji in Bengaluru; Editing by \u200bKen Ferris)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"June 4 (Reuters) \u2013 Serena Williams will partner Canada\u2019s Victoria Mboko in her long-awaited return to professional tennis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-256595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}